MLK Jr. Day-2019

It is hard to believe that it has been thirty-three years since the first MLK Jr Remembrance Day. I was a gradual student at Georgia Tech at the time and since I was living in the city where Dr. King had lived and worked, we were right in the middle of the action.

While I was cognizant of the civil rights movement and it’s meaning, and I was aligned with its goals, I was not fully engaged in the holiday nor in the intent of the movement until that watershed year.

I was a member of the Graduate Student Senate at Georgia Tech at the time and a cross was burned in the front lawn of the first African-American sorority on campus the year prior. Georgia Tech owns all the land on campus, and they rent the houses out to the fraternities and sororities, and the competition for the privilege to have a house on campus was fierce. One had come vacant and the administration decided to rent it to an African-American sorority. There was a lot of discontent and rumbling amongst the Greek system, which is not surprising since Georgia Tech was deep in Dixie and the traditions surrounding the school are deeply rooted in the ante-bellum south. It was an annual tradition during rush week to have the dean of students lead a charge up Library Hill wearing a Confederate general’s outfit on a horse as the fraternity members from his fraternity charged up that hill with him.

Our president, Joseph Pettit, a genteel and introspective scholar, instituted measure to review the racial climate on campus as well as instituted educational sessions for every administrators and student leaders. This was how I was selected to be a small group of students who were being trained by Dr. Charles King, a civil rights activist and educator. Yes, the dean of students was ordered to attend as well, not with the students’ group but with all the administrators, including Dr. Pettit. It was a very tough session, going deep into our internal biases and beliefs. Our longest help beliefs were examined, and we were called out on our most cherished beliefs and they were exposed as myths. It was in the middle of this that the state of Georgia was slowly implementing plans to celebrate the very first MLK Jr. Day.

I remember attending the that first celebration, the center of the celebration was around Ebenezer Baptist Church and the corridor leading up the Martin Luther King Jr Center for Nonviolent Social Change, the MLK Jr. historical district, and Dr. King’s childhood home. There was an ecumenical service with assorted dignitaries and all kinds of festivities. This was a big deal for the community and for the city of Atlanta.

I went to the Sweet Auburn area for no real reason except to bask in the festivities and to witness the joys and celebration of the very first celebration. I walked amongst the stalls and businesses selling commemorative souvenirs, in the tradition of American entrepreneurship. There was joy but it was also somewhat subdued, as if people couldn’t believe that this was actually happening. I watched the parade as it made its way down Auburn Avenue towards the MLK Jr Center. For sheer contrast of the two Americas, you only had to look at the two bands that were there to march. The first was the Marine Corp. Band. THE Marine Corp Band, whose director was John Phillip Souza. Sharply dressed, the epitome of musical excellence and discipline. Marching in precision and giving off the aura of gravitas as intended, the musical selection was as expected, patriotic, solemn, almost severe. The other band was the Grambling state marching band, no less accomplished musically but more freeform, more creative, more informal, and much more joyous and celebratory. They did their steps and they marched as if they were entertaining at a football game. It was a raucous celebration and I had believed that this was a moment in time that we as a nation had reaching a turning point. The juxtaposition of the band’s was not lost on me, although I just took note of the difference in my mind and chalked it up to cultural differences. Little did I know that the differences would be make itself abundantly clear in the most hateful way.

One of the few municipalities to not recognize MLK Jr Day was Cummings Georgia, a small community in Forsyth County in north Georgia. Cummings today is very different from the Cummings of 1986. Cummings in 1986 was a small rural community, but it had the ignominious reputation, along with many other Georgia communities where blacks re not allowed to be in town after sundown. There are no black citizens in Cummings, let alone black property owners, as the white citizens of the community chased all the black people who used to live there out of town in 1912, the purported reason? Black men were accused of raping white women in Forsyth County, three black men were murdered by lynching at that time and the white citizenry gladly stole their properties and made it their own.

In 1987, there was a case of a group of black people being assaulted while enjoying a day out on the lake while black. Rev. Hosea Williams led a peace march through downtown Cummings and were also attacked. The following week, there was a call for another march through Cummings. Georgia Tech leaders after having been educated through the Dr. Charles King training rented buses for anyone who wanted to go and participate. My friend Janet talked me into going, as representatives of the Graduate Student Government. I was very scared, I had been warned about the white supremacists in the north Georgia mountains and was leery of engaging them directly. But this time, we had anything from 15,000 to 25,000 people of all kinds descending on Cummings. A line of Georgia Bureau of Investigation and the state highway patrol standing with locked arms along the march route, about a mile outside of town. They were between us and the white hood clad Klansman, who were spouting hate, spitting, threatening us with harm. Just as we were wavering, a drag queen of local renown in Atlanta stepped forward shouldering a boombox, dress in fishnet stocking and hot pants. She sauntered down the street as if it was a runway and led us down towards downtown. We were thus emboldened and marcjed along timidly behind.

There were many surreal moments in the short march, I remember the eerie silence along the way, no one said much. The silence pierced by the occasional spouted hate from behind the police cordon. I remember little kids wearing mini Klan hoods. I suspect they are the present-day hate mongers that we see in Charlottesville and other places. I remember looking to the faces behind the lines and seeing the defiant looks. I also remember the expressionless and blank stares of the GBI and state troopers, making it seem like it was just another day at the office. The rest of the march was a blur. I remember that both senators from Georgia, Sam Nunn and Wyche Fowler were giving speeches, but I was too preoccupied to pay much attention. We walked back to the buses and went home. I remember watching CNN’s coverage of us and getting a little pumped up over what I did. I want to say that I knew that it wasn’t over, that the battle over equality and amity between the black and white was far from being settled, but I wanted to believe this, that my little part in the very large picture was what made the difference, even though I knew very little was accomplished.

Cumming is now a booming town; the town is integrated and is enjoying an economic renaissance. This is the thirty-third celebration of MLK Jr day. Yet, the chasm between the races are as big, if not bigger than ever, fueled by the renewed hatred from the financially disenfranchised whites who believe that the racial differences are what is keeping them from economic prosperity and a cynical national political machinery that deliberately take advantage of that idea by using the race card to divides the economically disenfranchised into black and white, so create a haven for their craven purposes.

I think back to those two days in my past and I am torn between two poles, between elation and despair, between hopefulness and hopelessness, between the remnants of my youthful idealism and my well-earned cynicism. That is where I am on this MLK Jr Day, 2019.